Like Zostrianos,
and Allogenes, the text
describes a very elaborate esotericcosmogony of successive emanations from an
original God, as revealed by
Marsanes. Within the text there are indications that the Sethians
had developed ideas of monism,
an idea comparable to Heracleon's notion of universal perfection
and permanence as expressed through the constancy of the total mass
of things within it (that is, all matter in the universe
may only change form, and may not be created or destroyed), and the
later Stoic
insistence of nothing existing beyond the material.